Internet marketing trends for 2019

Well at the time of writing this article, it’s near the end of 2018. So I’m going to peer into my very foggy crystal ball and look at the current and upcoming internet marketing trends in 2019 and beyond. We live in exciting times, so let’s see what the future holds for us!

Internet marketing trends in 2019

I’ll talk about what I see as the current trends in internet marketing and digital marketing, and where I think we are heading in the next couple of years to come.

Email is still a thing

I’ve talked a lot about email marketing and I still really think it is one of the best and most important channels for internet marketing. People still have email addresses and use them all the time. People need them for official communications (their phone bills, council rates and so on) and for a single identity for their social media accounts.

There is simply no simple effective replacement for email next year or the after that. There might be a very gradual reduction in email, and an increasing sense of “email overload” that people feel from so many crappy spam emails. But that’s why Google invented the dreaded Promotions folder (the most hated enemy of internet marketers everywhere).

So it’s about being smarter with email. Make sure you are sending quality content, at appropriate intervals. Make sure you are adding value. Encourage people to whitelist your address and engage with your content.

Put an effort into learning how to use storytelling in your emails – the best way I know to do this is The Commission Machine course (and it’s dirt cheap, so check out my review).

Bots will become more of a thing, up to a point

Facebook Messenger Bots have been one of the big new trends in 2018, and that will continue in 2019. They are a bit trickier to setup than email, but they have higher open and interaction rates than emails.

This means a bunch of people will pile onto this trend in 2019. The question is does this mean that it will become saturated like email has become, and people start ignoring or unsubscribing from them?

This is an interesting space to watch – we will have to wait and see. Doing bots right requires some skill and care that I think a lot of people don’t currently have. So I think we’ll also see an increase in the number of courses and products around setting up bots and teaching how to use them properly.

Video, especially live video, continues to dominate

Video is a huge medium at the moment. We are in the middle of a giant tectonic shift in the web right now, moving from primarily a text-based ecosystem to a video-based ecosystem.

A lot of people aren’t properly prepared for this – including myself! As soon as I’ve got 100 or so good articles on this website, I’m going to start producing videos as my next main content platform.

Youtube is the obvious 600 pound gorilla in the room here, but it is becoming frighteningly saturated. Facebook and its trendy cousin Instagram are the new players to watch. These platforms are focusing more on vlogging and Live Video.

I think mastering live video is going to be an extremely valuable skill in the next year or two to come, and it’s no surprise that many experienced marketers are using video and live video to attract leads, build an audience and provide value.

A shift from low ticket to medium and high ticket offers

I think the current IM / MMO space is saturated with low ticket offers – some of which are great and very good value, but some of which are low quality and don’t do well. This race to the bottom hurts everybody and isn’t sustainable.

I think that smart marketers are going to put more effort into bigger and better quality products with a higher price tag. Personally I would really like to see more medium ticket items. Everything either seems to be $10 or $1000, with very little inbetween. Where are the $90 offers?

If someone manages to figure out the strategy and positioning for this market, they will do very well for themselves.

Launchjacking becomes less effective

The practice of putting out review videos that drop when a product does and scooping up traffic is a smart and profitable one. It has been one of the major themes of 2017 and 2018 and I think a lot of people will be doing it in 2019.

The problem is, it is becoming very crowded. It was fine when there was hardly any competition, but now every man and his dog is having a try at it. Mainly due to the success of courses on it taught by successful marketers like Jono Armstrong.

As more people flood into it, the effectiveness decreases for two reasons. Firstly, it is harder to rank your video against 100 other reviewers as compared to when there were only 10 or 20 to beat.

Secondly, there is now a very high ratio of people reviewing and promoting as compared to people buying and consuming. If everyone is teaching a course on how to promote courses, the ratio of people just buying courses as opposed to promoting courses shifts, and not in a good way.

So I think launchjacking is still feasible if you know the ropes, but will become profitable for a decreasing number of people perched at the top of the pyramid.

E-commerce will continue to grow (somehow)

E-commerce is a colossal industry, I think now worth over $1 trillion per year. And I cannot see it slowing down – if anything, it will speed up. There are just so many advantages to buying goods online as opposed to in a store. The only brick and mortar stores that will survive will be those that have goods that people really like to interact with before buying (e.g. perfume), or those that offer a very personal and premium level of service.

When I build this blog up to a job-replacing income, I’m going to have the time to properly learn and implement e-commerce strategies. The margins are worse than for digital products but the conversion rates are much higher. A lot of people don’t trust some ebook or video course taught by a random marketer, but will be happy to buy something online where they know what it is and they were thinking of buying at the shop anyway.

Shopify and FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) are the obvious big players here, but there are other options and emerging players (like Etsy), and it will be very interesting to see where this space moves in 2019.

Social Media becomes dominated by Youtube and Instagram

Twitter and Facebook are starting to become the daggy kids of the social media world, and are going to be gradually suffocated by Youtube and Instagram. These platforms are huge and unstoppable. Facebook isn’t scared by Instagram because it owns it (smart buy, Zuckerberg), but sees Youtube as a bitter rival.

Hence the focus on Facebook Live and Instagram TV.

Pinterest is a good platform for both consumers and marketers and will continue to grow. Smart people will realise the value of Pinterest ads (sadly for me, it will drive the prices up) and probably start moving their ad accounts there.

If you want to learn how to get traffic from Pinterest, you can read my article on it, or even better, check out the Bloggii course – it’s the best course on Pinterest traffic that I know of (and I’ve tried a few).

Summary

Well I hope you liked my attempt to peer into my crystal ball and predict the marketing trneds of 2019. I look forward to doing the next one in a years’ time – and I can see which ones I got right and which ones I missed! Can you think of any others? Please leave them in the comments!